


bedtime stories

by keyringkie



Series: blessed blood and cursed bones [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Deity Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Deity Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Deity TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Deity Wilbur Soot, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mentioned Eret (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Karl Jacobs, Mostly Fluff, niki and ranboo are siblings, no beta i die like michael's chicken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29956896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keyringkie/pseuds/keyringkie
Summary: “Tell me a story! Like one of those heroes you always talk about.”Niki smiles gently, combing her fingers through her younger brother’s hair. Her eyes glow faintly, gentle wisps of gold and white shining in the dim room.“Are you sure? The last time I did, you stayed up for an hour crying.”“I’m not a baby!! I won’t cry this time, I promise!”"Have you ever heard the story of Tommy?"or: a girl who can see the past as vividly as the present tells a story to her brother.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Ranboo, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: blessed blood and cursed bones [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203260
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	bedtime stories

“Tell me a story! Like one of those heroes you always talk about.”

Niki smiles gently, combing her fingers through her younger brother’s hair. Her eyes glow faintly, gentle wisps of gold and white shining in the dim room.

“Are you sure? The last time I did, you stayed up for an hour crying.”

“I’m not a baby!! I won’t cry this time, I promise!”

She laughs, sitting down on the bed. It tilts slightly under her weight, the soft blankets accommodating her body easily. She sets the lantern in her hand on the side table, humming softly under her breath.

“Have you ever heard of the story of Tommy?”

The light flickers almost on cue, and Ranboo shivers bundled under the covers. “I don’t think so. Tell me!!”

“Calm down, I’m getting to it.” She taps him lightly on the nose, and he giggles.

“Well, a long time ago, there was a boy named Tommy. He was maybe… eight?”

“So a year older than me?”

“That’s right. Tommy was a very special kid.”

“Well… how come?”

“A big war came to his village because Dream happened to swing by. He’s the only one who survived.”

“Did you know he only survived because Philza took mercy on him?”

“Phil? The god of death? Really??”

“Yes! He turned Tommy away at the gate.”

_ Tommy shivers, the warmth of the underworld just barely out of reach. He can feel it in every bone of his body. He’s close. He’s almost there. _

_ His fingers graze stone and pass straight through, his body tumbling through the false entrance. He catches himself before falling flat onto his face and stares at the tall gates before him. _

_ Sterling silver, polished to a gleam. Metal bars bar him from entering, no visible lock keeping it shut but a general sense of otherworldliness - of  _ magic _ \- keeps the doors shut. A decorative pattern traces around the middle of the bars, two wings adorned in the curves of the metal. _

_ He reaches out to touch the gates and hisses when his hand gets near, drawing back with a start. _

_ “Go home.” _

_ He turns to stare at the other side of the gates, where a man appears from the fog obscuring the afterlife. Blond hair frames deathly pale skin, dark blue eyes piercing through the bars. The man curls his fingers on the bars of the gates and they hum in response, a tingle of magic vibrating through the air. Dark grey wings dip low towards the floor, their whitened tips nearly touching the ground. A silver diadem adorns his head, a ruby in the shape of an angled heart molded into the middle. _

_ The god stares at him with a wistful smile on his face. _

_ “Go home, kid." _

“So Tommy didn’t die when the rest of his village did.”

“He must’ve been really lonely… I wouldn’t wanna lose you!”

“I wouldn’t want to lose you either!” She smiles, the glow dimming slightly to reveal amber eyes, half-visible behind a mess of brown and blonde hair.

“Hmm… you know Technoblade, right?”

“The other war god?”

“Yes! He found Tommy, and- and he gave him his blessing!”

_ Tommy stares at the stranger who appeared in thin air, loosening his hands from their death grip on the back of his shirt. Short, muted pink hair, with a braid looping from the left side of their head and tied off on the other end. A sword hangs at their side, the scabbard of black metal lined with a shimmer of gold. _

_ “Where di’ you come from?” _

_ He nearly clamps a hand over his mouth with the glare he’s affixed with, staring back at the stranger expectantly. _

_ “Everywhere.” _

_ He hums in response, uncrossing his legs and wiggling his foot back and forth.  _

_ “You kinda just appeared.” _

_ The stranger laughs, deep and quiet. “You aren’t supposed to be able to see me.” _

_ Tommy furrows his brow, bouncing his knee. Not supposed to see? What else would happen? It’s not as if people can vanish in thin air. _

_ The stranger shifts on his feet, hand drifting away from the sword. “What’s your name?” _

_ He brightens a little. A question he can answer! “I’m Tommy! Er, Thomas, but everyone calls me Tom or Tommy.” _

_ He pauses for a moment and wilts slightly, remembering the destruction around him. _

_ “Called.” _

_ The stranger stares at him for a second too long and he shifts uncomfortably. “What’s your name?” _

_ Nothing but silence answers his question, left hanging heavy in the air. He relaxes slightly, leaning into the cold metal of the lamppost behind him. He bends his left knee, shimmying his right foot back and forth. The stranger closes his eyes, seeming to consider something. _

_ All at once, they snap their eyes open, unsheathing his sword in one swift motion. Tommy straightens as they release the braid from where it was clipped onto the other side of his head, falling loose into his hand. He slices upwards in one smooth motion, the hair clasped limply in his palm. _

_ Tommy watches as he winds the strands around the blade almost methodically, with a rhythm he can’t quite make out. Once they seem satisfied, he spins it in his hand, the blur of metal shining in the setting sun. _

_ The sword soars through the air and Tommy instinctually reaches up and grabs it, snagging it by the handle with an ease he didn’t know he could. _

_ He gapes at the steel in his hand, silver metal webbed with cracks - no,  _ strands _ of reddish-pink. A sense of victory rolls through him, a wave of understanding and yearning (yearning for what, he isn’t sure). _

_ The stranger affixes him with another look, paired with an almost playful salute with two fingers. _

_ “The name is Technoblade. Use that sword well.” _

_ And the god turns and stalks away, footsteps silent in a ghost town. _

“Oooo! Wow, Tommy’s kinda stacked, isn’t he?”

Niki giggles. “Well, I guess you could put it that way. He did have three gods on his side.”

“THREE?!”

“He was very lucky like that.”

“Wait a minute, so…” Ranboo scrunches up his nose, counting on his fingers.

“So he had Phil, who let him live. And then- and then he had Techno, who gave him a cool sword. And- and who’s the third?”

“Mmmm. One of the creation gods. Wilbur.”

“The creation gods! The- the oldest ones, right? They wrote the world, and its- its, like, fate, right?”

“That’s right! You’re getting better at remembering these gods.”

“I love your stories! Of course I’d remember.”

_ He stands in this vast- this unending  _ nothingness _ , a void of blinding white as far as he can see in every direction. He spins in a slow circle, slowly walking forwards. When he stops a few steps later, it hardly feels like he’s moved.  _

_ “Terrifying, isn’t it?” _

_ He startles, turning to his left. “Um- hi?” _

_ He has to tilt his head up slightly to stare at the man next to him, a brown-haired man with silver framed glasses who seems to be at least a foot taller than him. His clothes are a swirl of cheery yellow and black, loose sunshine yellow sleeves hanging on a collared black shirt tucked into even darker pants. _

_ “It’s the Nook.” _

_ “The- the what?” _

_ The man chuckles, covering Tommy’s eyes for a split second. When he pulls his hand away, Tommy gasps. _

_ A network of bright blue hangs in the air where blank white stared at him before, hovering just above his head. All around him, really. A few paces away, he could reach out and touch it. At his feet, bubbles of grey lie scattered on the ground, paper thin threads connecting them from the ground to parts of the web and to each other. _

_ “I guess it’s sort of beautiful, isn’t it?” _

_ Tommy nods, not taking his eyes off the network around him. _

_ “What is all this?” _

_ The man shifts slightly, shrugging. “The Web. Past, present, future. Look.” _

_ He points as a dozen bubbles threads unravel, losing their bright hue as they drift towards the ground and settle amongst the mess. _

_ “That’s a dozen possibilities that just got ruled out.” _

_ “This- this is time itself?” _

_ “I guess so.” _

_ “Why am  _ I  _ here?” _

_ The man hums under his breath. “I guess I brought you here on accident.” _

_ “An accident?” _

_ “Or… not an accident.” _

_ The man picks up a thread from the floor, snapping it from the bubbles it was attached to. He takes it in his fingers and shapes it into a circle, pinching his fingers on one point specifically. When he uncovers it a moment later, dull golden metal glimmers back at him, with an electric blue gem embedded where his fingers lay one moment ago. He offers it to Tommy. _

_ “A decision, really.” _

“He had three whole gods on his side?”

“It came with a big cost, though. You remember Karl, right?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, Tommy spent a year looking for him to learn from, and then spent a few years learning once he actually found him.”

“What would he even learn? Math?”

Niki laughs. “No, that’s just something we do. He learned how to fight, mostly.”

“I thought heroes knew that already…”

Niki’s eyes spark and she clutches her head, weakly gasping. Glimpses of- of-

_ Ranboo, years older, screaming at… someone. Fire. The sky, red and gray. The taste of smoke in the air. Death, everywhere, as the world begins to die. _

A flash of pain spreads through her body, the vision and the pain gone as quickly as they came.

“Are you okay?!”

She smiles as her eyes dim again, returning to the steady, dim glow from beforehand.

“I’m fine, just a little tired.”

_ What had she seen again? She couldn’t… remember. _

“Well then hurry up and finish the story so we can sleep!!”

“Where was I again?”

“Tommy and Karl!”

“Right, right.” She clears her throat. “So, Tommy learned from Karl and left. He became a great hero! He spent a year in the Nether, returning after no one else has before. He became a leader to an army, a commander for the King Eret.”

“Isn’t he-”

“Yes, she’s technically our grandparent.”

“...huh. That’s kinda cool.”

“It is! Except… Tommy gave too much to the people. To the royalty, really. The people didn’t like him.”

“So…?”

“So on a return from a war for more land, his men betrayed him.”

Ranboo wilts in his sheets, huddling under his blanket.

“Oh.”

“He- they left him in a burning battleground. Rumor has it that they never found a body.”

“Then- then what happened to him?”

“Well… where he died, there’s a patch of pure white flowers. You can’t pick them. A lot of people have tried.”

“You still haven’t told me what happened to him!”

Niki giggles. “My, my, impatient, aren’t we?”

“Sorry…”

“I’m just teasing. Tommy became a god.”

Ranboo sits up abruptly, clutching the sheets in his hands. “HUH? But- you told me that never ever ever happens!”

“Mhm. But getting blessed by three gods also never, ever, ever happens.”

“So what’s he the god of?”

Niki pauses, the answer on the tip of her tongue. Her eyes dim further, the faint glow disappearing and the lantern on the table becoming the only light in the room.

“I don’t know.”

Ranboo pouts, flopping back into his bed. “Well, that’s not fair. You know everything!”

Niki stands up, stretching her legs. “We both know that’s not true. You’re still far better at English than I’ll ever be.”

Ranboo laughs. “I’m seven! You’re like- fourteen!”

Niki rubs his head affectionately, picking up the lantern from the table. 

“So? Tommy was eight.”

Ranboo sniffs. “Tommy’s different. He was a hero.”

Niki exhales, a faint smile on her lips. “Maybe you can be, too.”

She turns to leave, pausing at the doorway. The dim light from the lantern and the torchlight from the hallway barely illuminate the boy tucked beneath a dozen sheets, pale white skin littered with midnight black patches. Messy black hair streaked with white falls around mismatching eyes that watch her leave. She bites her lip.

“Goodnight, Ranboo. Sleep well.”

“Night Niki!”

**Author's Note:**

> niki?? ranboo???? pogchamp????
> 
> this isn't the end of tbhb!! this is simply a segway to the other series. there's still a few more fics i want to write in tommy's story, i just want to also introduce the secondary story of this universe :)
> 
> TBHB will remain tommy-centric/sbi-centric. BBCB is going to focus mostly on ranboo.
> 
> i liked writing this fic. gave me a big chance to rewrite a lot of the first fic, since i was still relearning how i enjoy writing when i did it.
> 
> for a little bit of explanation/summary:  
> this fic takes place a few dozen years after tommy's death. niki is a seer who uses her powers, in this case, to tell ranboo tommy's story.
> 
> i was gonna post this in the morning but i didn't. i didn't want to wait....
> 
> [my tumblr](https://keyring-kieran.tumblr.com/)


End file.
